NCN (the mastermind behind the No Credit Needed Network – which I am a member of) asked me if I would write a guest post since we’ve reached the halfway mark with our debt reduction. NCN and network members have been awesome – providing encouraging words during our debt reduction journey – so I had to write a post for NCN. 🙂

Flashback to February of 2006. Total credit card debt? $37,618.

That number seems so huge. It still seems huge. But a year and ten months later that debt total is now down to $17,514. It’s been one heck of a ride.

There are moments of pure bliss when you pay off a chunk of debt. The first year we were paying off chunks of debt left and right. We were tightening our financial belt and bringing in more income. Debt reduction life was good!

The next year, things were a lot different. My husband “lost” his job (long story) which hurt our income. Then a revision on a prior year’s tax return increased our debt load by roughly $1,700. Quite frankly, I was starting to lose steam and began to wonder if we were ever going to be debt free.

Slowly, we paid off the tax debt and started making progress again. My husband also picked up some hours at a temporary job. After a while, we were again able to pay off huge chunks of our debt and today the grand-total that we’ve paid off on our credit cards is $20,100.

One thing that I’ve learned the past year and ten months is that while you are in debt reduction mode, life doesn’t stand till. You have to roll with the punches and when you can’t necessarily pay much extra towards your debt…don’t give up hope. We definitely hit some lulls with our debt reduction, but I’ve come to realize that it’s all part of the roller coaster
ride. There will be ups and there will be downs.

Will we hit more lulls? Probably. But we’ll hang tight and make it through it.

One day in the next few years, we will be able to exclaim that we are credit card debt-free. That will be a big moment of pure bliss 🙂

I want to thank Tricia for this inspirational and honest guest post. Please take a minute to visit her site, Blogging Away Debt, and let her know that you’re pulling for her!

Great post, you can do it!! I agree, you do have to learn to roll with the ups and downs of financial life. We have paid off $53,000 in unsecured debt during 2007, we have @$1750 left to go. Things come up, we had A/C repair and a car repair just about the same time (towrds the end of summer 2007) and it knocked us back @$2000.